


by the open sea

by lazy_universes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Disabilities, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, bc i can't write as a top apparently, bottom Moira
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-05-10 00:58:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14726939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazy_universes/pseuds/lazy_universes
Summary: “You could come back,” Angela said, quietly, so low it might’ve been a hushed whisper. “Let me take care of you.”Moira paused: she wished she could. The selkies in the sea begged her not to - for her not to go where they couldn’t reach, to where the witches brewing spells in their cast iron cauldrons couldn’t help her. But oh, how she wished; she wondered why Angela was so intent on rescuing whatever was left of her after she got overrun by the consequences of her acts.Maybe it was love, she thought.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Marfan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702318) by [Buttons15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttons15/pseuds/Buttons15). 



> lazy_universes: I like how this is coming out tho, very poetic. Like a literary experiment. I feel like a modern day James Joyce.  
> buttons: ULYSSES  
> lazy_universes: it's ironic because he's Irish  
> buttons: WHAT A BORING ASS BOOK I SWEAR TO GOD

 

_i could not contain myself any longer_

_i ran to the ocean_

_in the middle of the night_

_and confessed my love for you to the water_

_as i finished telling her_

_the salt in her body became sugar_

  


2079

 

“Planning on arresting me?”

A rustling of fabric, the creaking of grass under feet. Moira felt the sea breeze caress her face, bringing the scent of lemon grass and rose water, the same shampoo and conditioner Angela had used ever since they first met. It stuck to her bed, her clothes and her own hair, over her own smell, so overpowering she swore she could feel it even when they were thousands of miles apart, and she was half sure she would recognize it even dead and six feet under.

She didn’t have to look to recognize who had just sat by her side.

“Maybe,” the person said, fingers delicately tracing random paths on the patch of scalp right above her nape, sending shivers down her spine - she sighed. “ _Schatzi_ , you’ve started to gray.”

“Such is life,” Moira shrugged, shifting in place in a feeble attempt to become more comfortable on the rock she chose as bench. It was downright impossible, pointy edges digging into the flesh of her thighs, but the view made her suffering worthwhile - the land ending abruptly at a cliff, and the Irish sea stretching for miles and miles until it curved by the horizon, never again to be seen, grey clouds angrily elbowing each other out of the way in the sky. Cold, murky, angry waves: Ireland at its finest.

And yet. Sitting under a gray sky, shivering inside her coat, Moira had never felt more welcome, as if her soul knew, even though she decided to leave, that her place was amongst the grassland meadows and the wetlands covered in decayed matter, hiding thousand-year-old bodies under layers of sphagnum moss. The fire-haired witches and the fairies conjuring circles out of mushrooms called her in her dreams - _come home_ , they whispered, _you belong where we can reach you._ She was a scientist, but there was some magic deep within Ireland that made the land thrum under her feet, welcoming its prodigal daughter at last.

Sometimes she wondered if this undeniable and irresistible pull was the Land calling upon one last experiment - finding her rightful place in the wetlands by letting her body sink under the layers upon layers of plants that made up the Irish bogs, timing out how long would it take for her either to disappear forever or become a scientific oddity in the years to come. In death as in life - from the dirt she came and to the dirt she shall return, or so her mother once said.

“How’s the pain?” Angela asked. She turned slightly - the years had been kind to the doctor, barely a wrinkle on her face. She was nearing forty years, if her memory didn’t fail her, and she wondered how long had it been since they first crossed each other’s paths. She was still just as beautiful. Moira shrugged, making a vague sound that could mean anything from a six to a nine on a scale of one to ten, and Angela sighed. “You should be more careful with yourself, you know.”

“ _Storeen_ ,” she said, shaking her head, “you know there’s quite literally nothing else I could do.”

Angela smiled, sadly, leaning her head on her shoulder.

“I’ve missed it,” she said softly.

“Hm?”

“You calling me that. _Storeen_ ,” she repeated, her pronounciation near perfect out of sheer repetition. “I’d say it to myself sometimes, but it just isn’t the same.”

Moira scoffed, letting her rest her weight against her shoulder even though her joints protested vehemently. They sat in silence, watching the sea refuse to be dragged away from the shore.

“You could come back,” Angela said, quietly, so low it might’ve been a hushed whisper. “Let me take care of you.”

Moira paused: she wished she could. The selkies in the sea begged her not to - for her not to go where they couldn’t reach, to where the witches brewing spells in their cast iron cauldrons couldn’t help her. But oh, how she _wished;_ she wondered why Angela was so intent on rescuing whatever was left of her after she got overrun by the consequences of her acts.

Maybe it was love, she thought, watching the wide dark sea intently, the water lapping at the brittle sand. A repetitive dance - coming and going steadily, kissing the shore softly before leaving, but not before promising to return. Such was the nature of the ocean: leaving and returning, taking in crumbs of sand and leaving behind droplets of moisture.

Sometimes she wondered if that wasn’t her nature too.

  


2065

“Planning on arresting me?”

Angela huffed in annoyance and slammed the cabinet closed.

“I just fucking _might_ , asshole,” she hissed, angrily stomping her way from the back of the lab to her desk. She wore heels to work, something that baffled Moira to no end, but once all the personnel left for the evening and there were only the two of them in the room, she fished out the most hideous bright green Crocs from her personal drawers and made a scene of squeaking around the lab in those. Moira wondered why - she had a sensible black pair she used for surgeries, but there was something about the eye-hurting green that made those her absolute favorite.

As it was, however, she might’ve cut a more impressive figure stomping away in her her heels. Moira bit the inside of her cheeks not to laugh at Angela’s incessant squeaking on the linoleum floor.

“I thought,” she said, angrily slamming test tubes on her desk with as much strength as the glass could handle without shattering, “we had an _explicit_ arrangement of not messing with each other’s research.”

They did, but Moira didn’t mean to - she had had one too many Vicodins and ended up emptying what she was sure was _her_ experiment right into the toxic waste bin. Tough luck, but she knew it would be only a minor setback to Angela and didn’t think too much into it. Three days later, she was surprised with an angry Angela cursing in German and demanding her research back, or else.

“It’s as they say,” Moira said, absently typing on her holopad, “Leprechauns get mischievous near Saint Patrick’s Day.”

“You’re a bit too tall to be a Leprechaun, Moira,” Angela snarked, opening the drawers on her desk with so much violence Moira had half a mind to chasticizing her for it before quickly deciding against it - it wasn’t _her_ station that was getting wrecked, and besides, she figured the last thing Angela wanted was a piece of advice coming from her. She pulled out petri dishes, beakers, flasks, droppers; labeled vials of chemicals and notes were haphazardly pulled onto the desk.

“And that’s where you are mistaken,” Moira said, smirking. “Leprechauns are taller than most creatures.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Angela said, intrigued, looking up from her tubes with an eyebrow arched. “Weren’t they little bearded men?”

“The fine underlyings of the irony are not lost on you, I assume. You must know we Irish are known for our _impeccable_ sense of humor,” Moira quipped - Angela rolled her eyes.

“Are you _sure_ you’re Irish, then?” She said, and Moira laughed, unaffected by Angela’s snarky observation. “I’m afraid, Dr. O’Deorain, I find you lack sufficient evidence to support this claim.”

“If the red hair, the freckles and the accent aren’t enough, I do have a passport that says “Republic of Ireland” right here,” she said, wryly.

“Lies, I say,” Angela muttered to herself, turning her gaze back to the tubes on her desk, “Falsified evidence.”

It was in good nature, of course. She was sure whatever true irritation or anger about the wrecked experiment Angela might’ve had evaporated after she apologized, and the snark-filled banter was a welcome addition to her once silent days at the Overwatch lab. Angela was a talker - her voice was soft and calming when talking with her patients, but there was an edge of sarcasm and self-deprecating gallows humor when she was at the lab that enraptured Moira in such a way that she didn’t even mind listen to her babble on.

“Do you miss it, though?” Angela asked, absently.

“Hm?”

“Ireland?”

Moira paused, looking at her pad without really seeing it. Ireland was a missing limb that still ached years after being amputated - it was not the absence that hurt, but the phantom pain in something she was sure didn’t belong to her and never quite did. There was no homesickness, no undying need to return, no longing as her colleagues expressed when describing their home lands. She had been gone for so long she barely remembered it properly, and there were no happy memories in Ireland she felt an urge to relieve or remember either. Still, sometimes, if she was to be honest, she found herself muttering old Irish songs, as if it was her mother singing softly by her ear - _Idir ann is idir as, idir thuaidh is idir theas..._

“I don’t know,” she answered, simply, not quite knowing what to say.

“How can you _not_ know?” Angela said, raising her eyes again - blue, big and deep irises reading up to her soul. Moira felt heat crawling up her cheeks and averted her eyes, clearing her throat.

“I don’t have a particular feeling one way or the other,” she said, dryly.

“But would you go back?”

“If I had good research opportunities-”

“Moira,” Angela said, demanding, the same voice she used to command respect on those who ranked far higher than she did. “Would you go _back?_.”

Moira found herself at loss for words. Truth was, she didn’t know - she would like to pretend Ireland did not exist at all and she didn’t have to belong anywhere. She felt it as a perpetual weight on her spine, a perpetual burning she’d have to carry, too heavy for her bones to hold without aching her entire soul. _Idir thiar is idir thoir, idir am is idir áit-_

“I don’t know,” she repeated, shrugging. “If anything, Irish history has taught me to believe overly nationalist feelings are quite detrimental to one’s peace of mind or bodily integrity.”

“Hah, you wanna talk history now?” Angela laughed, “Did you forget I’m _jewish_?”

“Fine, I surrender,” Moira said, smirking, “You win this one.”

Angela giggled, shaking her head and finally concentrating on her experiment - Moira let out a breath of air she didn’t know she was holding, and outside the lab, she could see the sun peeking out right at the edge of the Mediterranean sea, so different from the murky, dark waters she remembered from home; infinitely more beautiful, more interesting, and if they were the color of Angela’s eyes, Moira figured it was just right.

  
  


Despite people’s apparent belief otherwise, she was quite aware she was all 6’4” of disproportionate limbs and lean figure, and knew very well the red hair and heterochromatic eyes did not help her fulfill wish to just pass unnoticed either. She wore her natural frown as a shield, her clothing as armor - every day the same suit pants, tie and lab coat, enough repetition in an attempt to make people skim over her appearance and pay attention only to her mind, her ideas, her brains.

It was never enough.

She dreaded the initial moment of meeting someone for the first time, the initial seconds of stunned surprised silence as people took her in - the large hands and feet, the long legs and arms, mismatched eyes and hair so red it could be pure fire. On good days, the immense awkwardness of her entire being was only a thought on the back of her mind - the panicked stares she’d receive from frightened interns and technicians alike passing through like a breeze. On bad days, there was the feeling of being too big for her own skin, bones creaking uncomfortably and the pain on her joints distracting her from her work, clouding her brain in a fog of painkillers and confusion.

On really bad days, there was Angela and her incessant staring.

Angela was a stunning woman, there was no denying it. All full curves and soft skin, round eyes the color of the sea, skin fair and flushed with color - at almost thirty, Angela cut a striking figure, one that was aptly co-opted as Overwatch propaganda as soon as she joined their ranks. She figured people would forget the paramilitary nature of the organization upon seeing her dimples, which wasn’t a stretch of imagination at any cases; Moira had seen foreign dignitaries falter and stutter in front of the doctor with her own eyes. She would bet half her savings _and_ her master’s degree that anyone who felt even slightly sexually attracted to women wished they could have her.

Moira, as it was, was no exception.

To be the subject of such an intense scrutiny always felt uncomfortable, her gaze a litany of sharp needles digging into her skin. Moira would fidget, walk around the lab, drink three times more coffee than usual in hopes that Angela would avert her eyes - nothing seemed to stop her, and staring back only got Angela to smirk with something feline and wicked hidden in the corners of her lips. She wondered what was it about her that captured Angela’s attention; she was a doctor at heart, and maybe her interest lied in the challenge of diagnosing what ailed her malformed body. Would she guess Marfan at first? Or would she, like the many other doctors of her childhood, jump around from Ehlers-Danlos to homocystinuria to simple hypermobility or to psychosomatic illnesses, scrutinizing every step she took for evidence of her own diagnosis? It didn’t matter - wondering about what Angela thought about her did nothing for her anxiety at being dissected with her eyes.

On those days, Moira would go back to her quarters feeling pried open, and showered meticulously, hoping to clean herself of her own shame - she’d force herself to look in the mirror right after showering, checking all of her imperfections, the surgical scars, the freckles dusting over her disproportionate limbs, the damp hair falling over her mismatched eyes, searching for Angela’s interest in the crevices of her skin. She’d swallow down the lump in her throat with more Vicodin, convincing herself it were her damned wrists that demanded so much medication, and not her attempt to numb the part of her brain that screamed that she could run wherever she wanted, but she would always be a curiosity. She couldn’t blame Angela, she would’ve done the same. And yet. An entire life of being gawked at, and her silly little heart still kept wishing for things it could never have. For people to forget the genetic mishap that was her body, for one thing.

For Angela to see her beyond her deformations, for another one.

She’d sleep a dreamless sleep and wake up feeling like absolute shit.

  
  


“Hello,” Angela said, flopping herself in the chair right in front of her. Moira raised her eyes from where she was dividing her attention between her dinner and a holopad full of scientific papers that demanded reading, raising one eyebrow. “Come around here often?”

“You’re in the lab,” Moira said, dryly, waving around the dimly lit lab - personnel gone for the day, there were only the two of them in the room. “Your elbows are on my desk. Take a wild guess.”

“ _Schatzi,_ don’t be smart when someone is flirting with you,” Angela said, peeking into her tupperware. “What is that?”

“You need to be smarter about your flirting, then,” Moira said, rolling her eyes at Angela’s joking flirtatious tone. “Salmon, carrots, there’s some mashed potatoes too. Why aren’t you at the canteen?”

Angela shrugged, unwrapping her sandwich and taking a bite - it looked oddly put together, and a huge piece of roast beef was hanging off one side made it one of the least appetizing sandwiches Moira had ever seen, which could only indicate Angela had prepared it herself. She sighed, toying around with her dinner without any intent and with any real will to eat, despite the hunger cramping her stomach.

“It’s pork today,” Angela said, “And the vegetarian option are corn fritters, which are just-”

“Hideous,” Moira completed, nodded, remembering the moist and soggy attempt at a vegetarian meal that got her dead set on cooking for herself. She’d have to remember to request a microwave at any point, but she didn’t mind cold food - that was, if she even remembered to eat all.

“That looks good though,” Angela said, “You should cook for me any of these days.”

“I had no idea you were interested in mashed potatoes,” she answered, and toyed around with the mass of pale yellow sticking to the sides of her salmon and burying the carrots. She wished she could’ve used garlic, but as that was off-limits too; unless she wanted her digestive system to riot inside her guts, her food would just have to taste slightly bland. “Isn’t this a little too simple for you? I heard you had dinner at a Michelin-rated restaurant this week.”

“Listen, if I already have to _go_ to those receptions they might as well pay me a good dinner as a reward,” Angela huffed. “Besides, anything can taste good if made by someone who know what they’re doing. Your fingers look skilled.”

Moira paused at what she thought was a double-entendre, but shook it out of her mind as Angela took another bite of her sandwich, seemingly innocent and unaware of what she’d just said.

“Unlike you, I dislike eating bad food,” She snarked. “With my dietary restrictions, I prefer to cook rather than eat whatever slop the canteen would prepare me.”

“It’s not _that_ bad.”

“You are no basis of comparison. You would eat dirt if someone sprinkled it with sugar.”

“Excuse you,” Angela said, frowning. “How restrictive _is_ your diet, anyways?”

“The most restrictive version of a low-FODMAP one can get,” Moira shrugged. “I tried to reintroduce some saccharides and they all just made me incredibly sick.”

“Oh dear,” Angela said, “I guess I’d have to ditch the wine if you called me over for dinner, though. There goes my romantic plan of wooing you over candles and an expensive Cabernet.”

“Why does it have to be expensive?” Moira scoffed.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine even if you put a gun to my forehead,” Angela said, laughing, and Moira shook her head, a small smile twisting her lips. She knew Angela didn’t mean to, and her flirting was her way of being friendly - she supposed it was in her best interest to be in good terms with the only other competent scientist in all of Overwatch. They both thought it was quite fun to see the look of surprise their casual mock flirting brought on the face of clueless lab workers, but sometimes she’d let herself imagine - inviting Angela over for dinner, having her undivided attention without any of the boundaries imposed between them by their work-

“Ask away.”

“What?”

“You have that face,” Angela said, running her index finger on the bridge of her nose - the abrupt touch sent shivers down her spine and Moira froze in place, stunned. “Your nose is scrunched up. You want to ask a question, so ask away.”

“Um,” Moira said, feeling her brain white out any resemblance of response - Angela’s careless, casual touch on her face sent her heart spinning, her stomach folding into itself twice. Flirting was fine, touching was a first, and Moira had half a mind to worry if she was reading too much into it before deciding she would not think of it at _all._

“Um?” Angela smirked.

“I thought you weren’t observant,” Moira blurted, the first thought that came into her head a solid shield against Angela’s prying into the mess her simple touch unleashed inside her mind.

“I’m not,” she shrugged. “But I didn’t eat pork for so long, it tastes weird now. I would say it’s dangerous to eat it considering our circumstances, but alas, I guess there would be a riot if I told the canteen to cut it from the menu.”

“The bacon revolution,” Moira muttered, and Angela choked on her sandwich, wheezing.

“Holy _shit,_ ” she wheezed, “I will tell _everyone_ in the base that you are a huge dork, and it will be the end of your reputation.”

“Please,” Moira waved her hand, “You could never.”

“Everyone is so afraid of you, they’ll jump at the first opportunity to see you as a little more human,” Angela said, smiling.

Moira paused, considering. She knew people weren’t overly fond of her - a sentiment that was reciprocate as far as she was concerned - and knew her colleagues were in the very least highly skittish around her; she had no intention of being loved or liked as long as everyone got their jobs done and didn’t interfere with her work. Being left alone meant being left in peace, and if at the end of the day she felt a little dull ache in her heart for having no one to talk to, that was just her business. Independency, she figured, came with a bit of loneliness, and she valued it too much to risk it over the promise of friendship or anything of the sorts.

And yet.

“Are you?”

“Hm?”

“Afraid of me?” Moira asked, only half-joking. Angela stared at her with her deep blue eyes, lips twisting in a smirk.

“I would never,” she said, slyly, “No, I think it’s something else. Curiosity, perhaps.”

“Oh,” Moira said, swallowing down the sudden lump in her throat. She looked at her hands, the long fingers, the disproportionate palms, and felt a sting in the corner of her eyes - a scientific oddity, a medical enigma, perpetually an object of interest-

“You know me,” she continued, vaguely, “Always up for a good challenge.”

Moira looked up - Angela took another bite from her sandwich, blissfully unaware of what her words had just unleashed inside her heart. The shame, the pain, the feeling of not belonging, the feeling of inadequacy that came from inhabiting her own bones-

“Your food is gonna get cold,” Angela said, mouth full.

“It’s cold already,” she said, feeling her stomach twist at the sight of her dinner.

  


They worked long hours more often than not, either  deep in conversations or not talking at all, nothing in between. Moira had figured long before she worked better at night, her best ideas flowing beautifully under the moonlight flooding the windows of the lab; it was when she lost all pretense, rolling up the sleeves of her shirt, loosening her tie and running her hands through her hair as she nervously paced around the room, lost in thought. Those were the moments she felt more alive.

That day, however, her excitement was cut short by Angela’s incessant staring.

She fidgeted on her feet, nervously biting the top of the pen she was holding between her long fingers. It unnerved her to no end being scrutinized when she felt most vulnerable, and she twisted the pen between her knuckles. The needles pierced her nape, her skin tight and taut over her flesh - she felt her heart race, falling out of rhythm in its haste to beat faster. It was night, it was dark, Angela was staring, and she just wanted a moment of peace without feeling an absolute monster-

“It’s Marfan,” she said, abruptly, still staring at the whiteboard where she was trying to translate a frameshift mutation.

“Hm?”

“Marfan Syndrome,” she said, clipped. She eyed the board without really seeing it, combinations of A, T, G and C floating out of context in front of her eyes as the blood rushed through her ears, instant regret eating at her heart. She shouldn’t have said anything. She shouldn’t have _said anything-_ “In case you were wondering.”

“What, what you’re working on?” Angela said, vaguely.

“No,” she replied, weakly. “No, you- You were staring. Have been. Thought I’d tell you before you came up with something ludicrous.”

There was a moment of silence that stretched for what Moira felt were ages - she could hear her heart beating incessantly, the mechanic bileaflets that replaced her failed valve ringing loudly inside her ribcage rushing her blood through faster. _Click-click-click-click-click-_

“What are you talking about, Moira?” Angela said, finally, pushing herself out of her chair and walking closer to Moira’s side for the lab - still in her 5-inch-heel black suede pumps that made her legs look incredible, and even though she didn’t had it in her to turn around and face her, she could imagine it - the slender thighs wrapped in her tight pencil skirt, the lab coat hanging loosely on her frame, just as stunning as she was every single day, the noise echoing around the room eerily similar to the one echoing behind her sternum - _click-click-click-click-click-_

“Me. I’m talking about you staring at me,” Moira said, nervously, gripping the marker so tightly her knuckles became white. “I have Marfan Syndrome. That’s why I am like- this.”

She pursed her lips tightly, feeling the floor sway under her feet - a rustling of fabric, heels clicking on linoleum floors, and she could feel Angela by her side. “Look at me.”

She didn’t want to, but she did anyways - Angela’s pupils were wide, and she licked her rosy lips absently. Whatever makeup she had on by morning had already worn off, the mascara slightly blurred around her eyes, making her irises so much more blue. Moira swallowed, cursing herself over seven times for saying anything and shredding the delicate balance they’d built between them to smithereens. She was familiar with the awkwardness that came around when she misread a situation, and felt her heart tighten at the thought of Angela imposing a cold distance between them-

“Do you think I’m staring at you,” Angela said, slowly, “Because I want to diagnose you?”

Moira’s throat was dry. She nodded.

Angela burst out in laughter, steading herself on Moira’s shoulder as she folded in half, right hand over her stomach. Moira felt what little color was in her face drain away, heart dropping to the floor. It was bad enough being scrutinized, but even worse being _laughed at-_

“This is not funny, Ziegler,” she hissed - the clipped way Angela’s last name came out of her lips even though they’d been on a first name basis for ages already pulled her back to reality.

“I’m sorry,” Angela said, giggling, and Moira schooled her face into a stone cold expression, trying to disguise how hurt, scared and caged she felt. “Oh, I’m so sorry. You thought _that_ was why I was staring? _Schatzi_ , I’m an orthopedist, I knew it was Marfan as soon as you walked through the door.”

Moira felt her brain short-circuit - she gaped at Angela, the way her eyes shined brightly under the sterile lights and the soft curve of the smile that insisted on not leaving her lips, and she didn’t know what to think. Her throat felt stuffed shut, and she swallowed thickly, eyeing Angela as if she was a mirage.

“If not,” she said, nervously, “Why do you-”

“I can’t _believe_ all this time you were just oblivious,” Angela said, giggling again. “I thought you weren’t interested. Jesus, Moira, I’ve been staring because you are so damn _beautiful_ , you look good enough to eat.”

Moira reeled back, shocked, and held on Angela’s wrist like a lifeline - she eyed her, eyes wide, and took a deep breath before answering.

“Very funny,” she said, weakly. How many years had it been since high school and all those fake dates she’d find herself into? Her loneliness didn’t fit her just right then, and it hurt to fit in it - she was desperate enough to want someone to talk to she’d look over the fact she was just the right amount of weird to be picked on. Pain, humiliation and bile rose up to her throat, and she heaved, struggling to keep it contained, because here she was, yet again in the same spot - it was Angela, however, and it hurt her to the marrow of her bones to think Angela could only see her as a oddity too.

“Oh God, you really don’t believe me” Angela said, stunned. “Moira, no _way_ you couldn’t tell. I’ve been crushing on you for _months._ Sometimes I couldn’t even look you straight in the eye because I wanted to fuck you so bad-”

“You don’t- Don’t lie to me, Angela,” she pleaded, softly, praying to all the gods she didn’t believe in that Angela could hear what she couldn’t say. That she had scarcely trusted someone as she trusted Angela, that she trusted her body even less and she just didn’t believe Angela’s desire could be true, but oh how she wished it was.

“I’m not,” Angela whispered, standing on the tip of her toes and pulling her closer, fingers finding their way into the short hairs on her nape, nails scratching down softly and shooting a shiver down her spine - Moira’s hands trembled as Angela guided them to her waist. “I would never. Let me show you.”

When their lips touched, Moira felt her whole world just shifted into place, as if Angela was the last piece of her soul that was missing, finally found and on its way home - her lips were soft and tasted like coffee and cherry bubblegum, sending electric currents that seeped down through her skin. She felt like a child again, trapped between the currents of the stormy Irish sea, more at peace than she had ever been despite the burning feeling of her lungs claiming for air - weightless, floating, _home._ She whimpered, tightening her hold around Angela’s waist, and when she felt her tongue gently tasting the salt on her lips, she moaned. Angela was, and this was no surprise, gently demanding, softly coaxing her to give more, hand more of herself over, and her soul had been such a burden to carry she felt she might as well just give it all-

“Oh wow,” Angela whispered when they broke apart - giggling, giddy, the weight of her body grounding Moira to the present - she leaned her forehead on Moira’s chest, still smiling, “Wow, this was-”

Moira nodded, throat dry, and tightened her hold on her waist. Angela’s fingers untucked her shirt, found a stretch of skin right above her waist, and she shivered.

“Shouldn’t ask you this,” she mumbled, voice thick. “But _mein Gott_ , I’ve been wanting you for so long, I- _Jesus_ , Moira. Let me take you home.”

The golden hair, the pale skin dotted with freckles, the slightly swollen lips, the eyes as blue as the sea that dragged her in, dragged her in, dragged her in…

Moira held Angela tight, as if she was a dream.

And nodded.


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contrary to popular belief, I spent the better part of the last months writing. Since I'm pretty sure none of you want to read a thesis on a feminist critique of tax law, here's a new chapter lmao
> 
> there's porn, you've been warned
> 
> (all poetry in the story comes from Rupi Kaur's amazing book the sun and her flowers! <3)

_the moon is responsible_

_for pulling tides_

_out of still waters_

_darling_

_I am the still water_

_and you are the moon_

  


2064

 

For a second she thought it was snow falling through the holes of the church’s roof and piling up in the altar. She was in Ireland, then - sitting inside abandoned huts hiding away from the world as snow slowly covered everything in a thick layer of white, seeking the solitude she could never find at home. The wind howling, her own breathing, she used to hide away from the world hidden under century old buildings, listen to nature howl out in despair at what they had done to her daughter Earth. She took a deep breath, expecting to inhale sharp crisp air, but smelled smoke.

It wasn’t snow, she realized. It’d be oddly beautiful if it was, and beautiful things seldom happened at will - it was ash, spiraling down the ceiling, covering her arms, her beret, the rotten wooden floor and the crooked face of Jesus on the cross. Ireland morphed into a battleground somewhere in Hungary, and the world around her was ash and embers left behind in the aftermath of a fire.

She looked down to her hands, fingertips numb. It had been thirty seven hours since she slept and some twenty two since she ate - her stomach grumbled and she ignored it solemnly, absently picking a small pack from inside her vest and dry-swallowing another vicodin pill. How many had it been now? She couldn’t tell - in her head, she felt like she had been in this small city somewhere in Hungary her entire life, going through corpses after corpses trying in vain to find a breathing heart buried under the debris and the buildings hollowed out by bombs. She was a scientist and belonged in a lab, but there was a lack of personnel and an impossibility to wait - Moira was tasked with the gruesome work of makeshift coroner, noting death after death.

FEMALE, aprox. 24 years. _Immediate cause of death:_ septic shock. _Intermediate cause:_ bacteremia. _Primary cause:_ Trauma to skull.

FEMALE, aprox. 47 years. _Immediate cause of death:_ cardiac arrest.. _Intermediate cause:_ respiratory failure. _Primary cause:_ inhalation of fumes.

MALE, aprox. 4 years. _Immediate cause of death:_ cardiac arrest. _Intermediate cause:_ respiratory failure. _Primary cause:_ inhalation of fumes.

FEMALE, aprox. 12 years. _Immediate cause of death:_ pericardial tamponade. _Intermediate cause:_ hemothorax. _Intermediate cause:_ perforation of lung and pleura. _Primary cause:_ traumatic rib cage injury.

INDETERMINATE. Cannot estimate age. _Primary cause of death:_ carbonization. Referral to forensic anthropology for further analysis-

“Dr. O’Deorain?”

She didn’t move, allowing for the woman to come in closer. Her steps were muffled by the thick blanket of ashes covering the ground; Moira knew who it was before Ziegler sat by her side on the creaky, rusty church bench. The wood creaked under her weight.

“Captain Amari set a rendezvous point roughly three hours from now, by the main square,” she said, still on her combat suit - Angela was tasked with saving life, Moira with acknowledging death. Looking back, she’d think it ironic. At the moment, there was nothing she could feel but a gaping emptiness inside her chest, fingers still gripping her communicator tightly. She stared absently at the skewed face of Jesus, wondering if it could hear her; her mother used to be a staunch believer that He did, spent hours in chapels and churches praying for her ever decaying body-

“Dr. O’Deorain?”

“Yes?” She answered, lowly. World spinning around her, the smell of fire and burnt flesh stuck to her nose, death looming over her shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

 _No_ , she wanted to scream. Moira wished she had in in her to pull her hair in grief, howl like a wolf that had just lost its pack, reinvent time so she could go back and do every little thing differently and wouldn’t be lost somewhere in Europe in the middle of a battlefield, and instead be at home in Ireland where she should’ve been for all those years. _No_ , the words tethered off the edge of her lips, begging to come out - her mechanic heart tightened inside her chest, the constant stream of click-click-click a timer of how long she had been utterly _alone_ -

“Um,” she said, voice hoarse. “Command messaged me today. My- My mother died.”

“Oh,” Ziegler said, blue eyes round and full of pity - she averted her look, unable to take such a raw display of emotion. “Oh my, I’m so sorry. When?”

“The day before yesterday,” she said, emptily. “They couldn’t reach me because of the fighting.”

“Are you flying back? I could ask Ana to-”

“No,” Moira shook her head. “She had been- she hadn’t recognized me in some ten years, maybe more. I gave the hospice clear instructions on what to do in case of-” She paused, throat tight, heart swollen inside her chest, veins constricting into themselves, her ribs tightening around her lungs- “Should her-”

“I see,” Ziegler said. There was silence, then - comfortable, soft, understanding. Moira was thankful as she thumbed the edges of her comm. Her mother had hair so blonde it looked like pure gold, eyes kind, loving hands. So many times she wanted to give up, so many times her mother held her back. Caitlín was stubborn, stupidly so, and so much she refused to die at once. She died slowly over the years, as death took her brain cells one by one until there was nothing left but a shell of a woman she called mother, and Moira wished she could’ve been braver - to be there on her final moments, as she had been there for her entire life; she was many things though, but brave wasn’t one of them, and seeing her waste away in front of her very eyes was too painful to bear.

She was a geneticist because she wanted to save lives, but didn’t want to deal with death; or at least was what she told herself every time she looked in the mirror, not willing to brand herself the coward she truly was. And how was that for punishment, she thought, bitterly, how was that for _irony -_ she abandoned her mother because she was too afraid to face the fragility of life, only to be dumped face first on a battlefield and forced to take notes on the deceased. MALE, aprox. 20 years. _Immediate cause of death:_ multiple organ failure. _Intermediate cause:_ hypovolemic shock. _Intermediate cause:_ ruptured spleen. _Primary cause:_ multiple gunshot wounds on left flank and hypochondrium regions-

“In any cases,” she said, grimly, trying to chase the images of dead body after dead body that took her mind as hostage, “I told them that if they couldn’t reach me, they should cremate her and scatter her on the sea. It’s been a while, so I guess that’s done with.” _And I’m all alone now,_ she didn’t say, words turning sour and bitter where they hid in the crevices under her tongue. The crooked Jesus stared at her, disapproving, displeased - _you abandoned the only person who truly loved you,_ the statue said, _you are truly undeserving of_ love _-_ _  
_ “Moira, I-” Ziegler said - she snapped back to her as she heard her first name roll down the rosy lips, sounding like a prayer she did not deserve. She twisted her hands, biting her lower lip. The statue stared at her from across the room: _you do not deserve this compassion, you do not deserve this kindness, you do not deserve this gentleness-_

“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. Her eyes were big, blue, wide, _beautiful_ , and Moira swallowed in shame fear desire lust and pain, pain, pain, _pain-_ “I know we only know each other for a few months, but I know what it is-” she paused, took a deep breath. “I know how it feels. To lose it all. If you want someone to talk to, I’m- I’m here. If you need me.”

Moira paused, eyeing her with surprised eyes - the angel of Mercy, Overwatch’s golden girl, offering kindness to someone like _her_ ; she wondered if God was really so cruel as to dangle the possibility of warmth in front of her only to leave her out on the cold, but figured if He did, it would only be a fitting punishment for someone as ungrateful as she was.

“Thank you, Angela,” she whispered, as softly as the smile that graced Angela’s lips. She stood, hair shining under the pale moonlight - pure gold, warm as home, safe as a lighthouse in the stormy Irish sea, beckoning her to go closer, closer, _closer-_

“Take your time,” she said, and gave her a small nod before leaving the church.

Moira shivered as all of the warmth seemed to drain out of her bones. Through the roof, snow and ash made their way lazily to the ground.

  
  


2065

 

Angela was spread on her bed like a feast, and Moira had been starving.

Lace bra slipping off her full breasts, chest heaving with her panting breath, skin flushed with heat; Angela couldn’t voice what she needed, but Moira seemed to be grasping the basics with every swirl of her tongue over clit, the gentle pumping of her fingers inside her. So _warm,_ this she could do, and giving Angela pleasure was just so easy, second nature as her lungs knew how to breathe as soon as they tasted air for the first time, as the marrow of her bones both knew how and yearned to please years before Angela had even been born. She wanted to keep doing it forever, the pads of her right hand fingers chasing the goosebumps on pale skin, each raised bump a star in a constellation that spelled miracles such as the one that let her taste Angela on a Thursday night, safely hidden in her quarters. She shivered when Angela shivered, taken aback with emotion - not even in her wildest _dreams_ she could imagine being allowed to do _this-_

“Moira,” Angela moaned, desperate, needy, a mere whisper out of the pale column of her throat, exposed as she threw her head back in pleasure. “Moira, _please_ -”

 _Whatever you need,_ Moira thought to herself. Angela was the moon and she was the sea - she moved on her command, wouldn’t know how to if she was not there to tell her what to do, didn’t know how she had lived all that time on her own. She curled her fingers upwards, feeling for the spot that would make Angela whimper in need, and felt oddly smug when she heard a long whine. Fingers tangling in her hair, pulling, directing, she yielded with no resistance.

“Moira,” Angela sighed heavily, her name barely recognizable between her whining and moaning and sighing - her thighs trembled under her fingertips, toes curling on the mattress-

She felt her walls tighten around her fingers, Angela’s spine arched off the bed beautifully, exposing her barely covered breasts, and Moira thought it was the closest thing to heaven she’d ever seen.

“Oh, _scheiße,”_ Angela cursed, gripping her tightly by the shoulders to capture her lips in a hurried, messy kiss, tasting her own pleasure on another mouth - they both shivered, and Angela’s hands found their way to Moira’s half-opened button shirt, hurriedly trying to get it opened-

Moira froze, holding Angela’s wrists tightly.

“Hm?” Angela said, confused. Her skin was still pink, chest still heaving from her orgasm, and Moira thought she was so incredibly beautiful, she did not deserve something as-

Something as herself.

She swallowed thickly, looking down. Aside from a few buttons and her lack of belt, she was still fully dressed - this was how the majority of her sexual encounters went because removing those layers of protection felt too difficult to handle, as if she would be offering something so delicate and breakable she couldn’t trust anyone with, while at the same time disclosing something so hideous she wanted to protect those unfortunate enough to come close to- to her _body_ . Angela pried one wrist from her grasp, cupped her cheek and stared at her with her round, blue eyes.

“You don’t want to?” Angela said. “It’s fine, but I really wanted to make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to,” she said, hoping what she really meant hadn’t bled through the words - _I want to, more than anything, but I don’t think I can handle scaring you away, there’s not that much left of me to shatter_. She didn’t know then how wrong she was. It didn’t matter then. It’d been years she had last let anyone do this to her and she’d never done it sober, self-conscious and ashamed of her own flesh.

“You didn’t answer me,” Angela said, frowning. “Thank you, but even if it _was_ my choice to make, I’d like it very much. _Can_ I?”

Moira paused. She looked at Angela’s curved up nose, the plump line of her cupid’s bow, the softness of her skin; she wanted her more than anything, more than she wanted to stay whole.

The moon was calling out to the sea - come, she said, come to me.

How could the sea ever hope to resist?

Angela’s hands tried once more, slowly unbuttoning her shirt. A button, pause. Another button, pause. Moira inhaled deeply, shaking. “Okay?” she asked.

The tide pulled her in, pulled her in, pulled her in…

“Okay,” she said, wobbly, shaking, uncertain. Angela looked at her, understanding filling the crevices of her irises, smiled softly, kissed her chastely on the cheek.

“Let it go, _Schatzi_ ,” she whispered in her ear. ‘Let me take care of you.”

Moira found herself laid carefully on the bed as Angela slowly took out her shirt. She shivered as her fingers traced the outline of her nipples under her simple, shapeless bra. Her skin looked ghostly pale under the moonlight flooding the room from the window, and Angela ran her hands over the expanse of her torso, mapping her freckles with her fingertips.

“ _S_ _ehr schön_ ,” Angela muttered to herself; Moira swallowed thickly, feeling her heart too big for her chest, blood rushing on her ears. Beautiful, she never thought of herself this way but this was what Angela was muttering against her skin; beautiful, so beautiful-

Angela’s fingers find their way under her bra - she trembled, but allowed her to unhook its clasps and pull it delicately away from her lean frame, exposing her small breasts and pale pink nipples to the open, cold air of the room. Moira thought absently she must’ve been the color of a ripe red fruit, but Angela’s fingers hovered over the scars on her chest, eyes trained down and away from her burning face. She could see her frown, and Angela opened her mouth as if she’d say something before closing it, deciding not to. She pressed the pads of her fingers on the long scar along her sternum, the small scars on each side of her ribs. Moira felt the skin on fire - here was here they stuck a metal rod inside her ribs to raise her sunken rib cage, here was where they opened her chest as a strange pair of wings to fix her failing heart, here’s what she hid under layers of sharp clothing and isolation, here’s how much Angela meant to her.

“That’s-” she said, hurrying to explain herself.

“I know,” Angela said, biting her lower lip. “Aortic valve repair,” she touched her sternum, then let her fingers travel back again to her ribs. “Nuss procedure. How old were you?”

“Twenty-eight and ten,” she shrugged, and Angela hummed absently, lowering her head to trace the scars with her lips. Moira whimpered, feeling her eyes water, and she closed them shut. She couldn’t see Angela, but she could feel her - lips circling one nipple softly, hands undoing the fly of her pants, her hair tickling the skin of her stomach as she made her way down, down, _down-_

She felt exposed, and that had nothing to do with being naked in front of someone else for the first time in _years_.

“Jesus, _fuck,_ Moira,” Angela muttered against the skin of her inner thigh - her fingers made their way inside her, teasing, _feeling_ . “ _Schatzi,_ you’re so wet-”

Moira gasped, gripping the sheets next to her head tightly. She felt herself being stretched open as Angela kissed the hollow space where her thigh connected to her pelvis, hot breath over her cunt, and she felt her spine light on fire, even the hairs on her legs raising up to see Moira O’Deorain getting head. She let her head fall back to the pillow, her skull singing into the foam; and stupidly thought that if this was really real and not a dream, then it was the first sign of the apocalypse because it was a damn _miracle-_

Then Angela let her tongue find its way to her clit between her folds, and all remnants of rational thought flew off.

Tides rise and fall with the moon, coming in, backing out. Coming in, backing out.

“Angela,” she mumbled, biting her lips to try and keep herself quiet - her attempts were only made futile by Angela’s renewed interest in hearing her cry out in pleasure. She could practically see her smug grin, but couldn’t focus on it long enough; her navel tightened, a thousand supernovas exploded behind her eyelids. She whined, moaned, cried out pitifully, feeling Angela's tongue and fingers trace an unrelenting pattern both inside and out of her body, and her legs trembled and her jaw clenched shut and she was so close, so _close-_

 _“_ Come,” she said, all command and no request, “Moira, come for me.”

The moon called upon the sea, telling it to _come_. The waves crashing on the shore, her pleasure crashing on her soul - Moira's entire body tightened as her mouth let our a husky wail for her heart, shattered in a thousand pieces that belonged to Angela and Angela only.

She was the sea, she was Angela’s, and so she went.

  
  


Her Nana told her to always let a plate of milk or a loaf of bread out for the little people, as a offering for protection. She figured it’d only attract cats, but she did it anyways. Catholic kids know better than to argue with their grandmothers.

She’d be dragged to the church on early Sunday mornings, hair carefully braided by skilled fingers, then dragged back home for lunch. She’d pray before eating and lay her head on her Grandmother’s lap while she told wild crazy magic tales of fairies, leprechauns, mermaids and gods, soft Irish spoken as she ran her fingers through Moira’s long, fiery red hair. At night, she couldn’t go to bed without saying her prayers. _Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Bless the bed that I lay on…_

They weren’t enough. She’d wake up screaming in horror at her own nightmares, imagining she was her father, her own heart ripping itself apart in a cloudy saturday morning, her own face turning bright red with the effort it took to howl as a wounded wolf in pain. Her fears weren’t unfounded - her father was the one who passed her the genetic mutation that could cause her aorta to be ripped apart from heart to gut, and odds were that she too would suffer from a sudden aortic dissection at any given point. But by then, she didn’t know that. All she knew at the height of her nine years of age was the absolute horror on his pale face as he screamed in pain so loud it hurt her ears, and she could do nothing as he screamed and screamed and _screamed-_

By the time the paramedics arrived, he’d stopped screaming.

Inside her head the sound would carry on forever, like her own personal Banshee howling her own mortality inside her mind. The smell of urine and vomit as he lost control of his guts. The thumping of his body over her thin legs, trapping her in place as he fell down and was unable to move. His electric blue eyes bloodshot, staring straight at her as the life drained from his body, as if to remind her his gruesome death ran in her veins too and it was just a matter of time before-

The solution her grandmother found: the plate of milk by the window. “The little people will carry the nightmares away,” she’d say, tucking her in at night. There was a strange comfort in the supernatural that children experience, a special kind of faith, as if something so trivial as a plate of milk could help her sleep. And yet. She’d wake up from her troubled dreams and find some odd comfort in the saucer by her window, as if she could somehow control fate.

When her grandmother passed away, some fifteen years and two strokes later, Moira was too old to believe in folk tales, and replaced the milk with increasingly higher doses of alprazolam. Figured it’d work better.

Still. When she found herself alone, staring quietly at the TV while Angela - _Mercy_ \- flew in all her glory in the thick of the battlefield, she found herself wishing for a saucer and some milk. How strange, the need humans have to feel as if they have a hand in spinning the fabric of destiny, when fate is an ocean that takes what it wants and doesn’t bother with desires. How many years it had been, how many people she had lost, and here she was - thinking she could cheat death with dairy and a bit of faith.

She shook her head softly. The holopad on her lap was opening the schematics for the Valkyrie suit. Maybe the milk wasn’t powerful enough, but her brain had to be; after all, she had devoted an entire life to find a way to give death a run for its money.

There was a way.

There had to be.

  
  
  
  
  


“How was Zurich?”

“Absolutely _hideous_ ,” Angela whined, throwing her scarf on her station. Moira smiled softly to herself without taking her eyes away from the screen she was working on, chin in hand and brows furrowed in concentration. Sometimes they were posted to different bases, spending days or even months apart. While Angela was often called to Zurich, Moira was mostly left alone in Gibraltar, where all the R &D kept its work safe. She didn’t mind - Zurich was an insanity of people, demands, politicians, _media_ , and she was happy enough being left alone.

Sometimes, however, it did feel lonely. Without Angela’s chatter, outrageous shoes and the soft smell of her shampoo filling the room, it was as if there was a hollow space that amplified the emptiness of her absence. In simple English, Moira missed her, but had a hard time admitting that even to herself. She took a deep breath, inhaling - rose water and lemongrass, and a tad bit of iodine too. She had been operating, that much she knew.

“...And then _after_ I had to patch Lena all over again, I mean, for the tenth time or so it seems,” she caught on, realizing Angela was talking - she got so distracted by her presence she missed what probably was another heroic tale for Overwatch’s Mercy, “They said we needed to go to a media event or something, and I told Jack we were worth shit in the state we were in, and he was like ‘well there’s nothing I can do about it’, but there wasn’t any time for the nanites to work properly so, imagine this, we were there in this fancy gala in formal clothing and looking like we came out of a _meat grinder_ and the Prime Minister of Japan wanted to talk to me but all I could think is _Oh Lord take me right now-_ Is that a pomegranate?”

“Huh?” Moira said, stunned. It had been the most amount of words she had heard in _weeks_ , happy enough to work in silence, and her brain reeled at the excess of information. True to her statement, there it was - a round, ripe pomegranate on her desk. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Where did you get this?” She asked, sitting on her desk and rolling the fruit between her pale fingers. Angela’s skin was pale, dotted by beauty marks - and in that moment, two purple bruises blossoming on her neck, exposed by her ponytail.

Moira felt her stomach tighten. She was no schoolgirl with a crush, and knew very well Angela wasn’t one to shy away from sexual encounters when she wanted - if she was to be _exclusive_ , she would have to work for it. Still, she didn’t expect to be reminded of her competition so soon and so starkly.

She spent their time apart scrutinizing their encounter, figuring it did meant more to her than it did to Angela, if it meant anything at all. And yet. One had to be very strong to resist falling hard when someone pried them open so delicately, exposing frail bones and delicate guts, and Moira was everything _but-_

“Moira?”

“Hm?” She said, absently.

“I asked you, where did you get this?” Angela repeated, waving the pomegranate in front of her eyes.

“Um,” Moira said. “Went to town to pick up some food, the woman at the grocery store gave me this one. I can’t eat it, so I brought it here to give it to someone who could.”

“Oh,” Angela said, “Can I have it, then?”

“Sure,” she shrugged. Angela dug into the hard peel, cracking the fruit open.

“I love this,” she said, absently. “I always thought it looked weird, but I tried it once in Greece and fell in love. There’s the myth, too-”

“Persephone,” Moira completed.

“Yeah,” Angela said. She crossed her legs on the table, wearing sensible ballerina flats for once, and started peeling the pomegranate intently. “I spent a summer in Ikaria when I was in college, heard something about it, but honestly, I’m just not a huge fan of mythology. Do you know it?”

“Yeah,” Moira, swallowing thickly. Angela frowned in concentration, littering her otherwise pristine desk with pieces of fruit, revealing the blood-red pearls hidden within. “Persephone was the daughter of Hera, who was kidnapped by Hades to be his queen. Her mother pleaded to Zeus, who said she could return from the underworld as long as she hadn’t eaten anything, but she had, and so they reached an agreement: she would spend half the year with her husband in the realm of the dead, and the other half with her mother in the realm of the living.”

“You’re a terrible storyteller,” Angela smiled, shaking her head.

“There’s nothing fun about this story,” Moira said, dryly. “The rape of Persephone is a common theme in arts, but I find the myth gruesome.”

“Maybe you are looking at it from the wrong perspective,” Angela said, finally prying a couple of seeds from the hard grasp of the fruit and chewing on them slowly. “Maybe she ate it because she wanted to. Maybe Hades wasn’t so _bad_.”

“For a greek god, yes,” Moira shook her head. “However, the standards for male behaviour in greek mythology are concerningly low. You’d be surprised.”

“I’m not _that_ illiterate, I know that much,” Angela rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Next to her mother she was only a princess, but Hades would make her a queen. Good enough reason to take the risk and stay, no? To know you could be treated like royalty?”

Moira stared at her, wondering. Sometimes, Angela said things that meant more than what she let on; the subtext was always lost on her, but she was so desperate for an inkling of interest she searched every single word with thirst, hoping to find solace for her own anxiety. She could never. She kept trying.

“I don’t think I follow you there, Angela,” she said, softly, eyes trained on her hands. Angela laughed - she looked up instantly.

“It’s just nonsense,” Angela said, perched atop her desk like a sole magpie harboring sorrow and ill omens in her life; she dug her fingers on the seedy pulp of the fruit, staining her fingers with their juices, and she took them one by one to her mouth, making her lips look like they had been coated in blood. She smiled, teeth stained red, wicked and impossibly beautiful. “I like to imagine she chose to stay. Besides,” she shrugged, digging for more seeds and licking her elegant fingers clean, holding Moira’s baffled stare. “Pomegranates are worth a lifetime in hell, don’t you think?”

“It’s not hell,” she mumbled, thickly.

“Hm?”

“Hades,” She said, cleared her throat - the air around the two of them tinged pink by the setting sun hiding behind the sea, twilight coloring Angela’s blue eyes purple, gold and red, all royal colors fitting to the queen of the Underworld and the princess of the Gods. And here she was, a single lost soul floating away to oblivion in the Styx, with no one left on earth to give her a single gold coin for her safe travel. One a legend, another a cautionary tale. One remembered, one forgotten. Angela dug her fruit like she was digging for gold, each seed swallowed a commitment to oversee a soul and yet not commiting to anyone in particular. Moira would do well putting herself in her place.

But what is a soul if not a collection of dreams that could never be?

“Hades is not hell.”

Angela blinked, quirking her head to the side. The sun set slowly behind the horizon, dimming the colors on her face and leaving space only for the sterile white fluorescent light of the lab. As if it were a dream - the sun set, night took over day, they were back to being colleagues and Angela went back at not wanting to stay.

“What do I know,” Angela shrugged, letting herself down from the table as she threw the peels of the pomegranate on the trash. “It’s not like we Jews have hell in the first place. So, what did I miss?” She asked, twisting around to look at her screen, “Nanites?”

  


“Commander?”

“O’Deorain, afternoon,” Reyes said, without taking his eyes from his holoscreen. Lines and lines of what she was sure was highly classified information passed quickly through the screen as he skimmed over them, likely not interested in the fine details of whatever it was. “Have a seat, I’ll talk to you in a second.”

Moira sat uncomfortably on the cold stainless steel chair in front of his desk. His office in Gibraltar was far less impressive than the one in Zurich - less screens, smaller, quite dusty from disuse. The chairs were worn and the technology was old, a clear sign this was not a place where Reyes spent some time. Still, she eyed the cramped space warily - cardboard boxes littered the floor, making it difficult for her to move around in her chair without accidentally stepping on something that might be important. She shifted, uncomfortable.

“There,” Reyes said, finally. Behind the gruesome scars on his face, Moira was sure once lied a very handsome man. He pulled his beanie from his head. “I was reading up your curriculum. You are a very good doctor.”

“Thank you,” Moira said, dryly, peeling the skin of her thumbs with her nails. Reyes would’ve never called her just to compliment her brains.

“In fact,” he said, and she thought _there we go_ , holding herself in check not to roll her eyes. How _obvious_. Reyes needed a favor. “You might as well be the exact type of doctor I need.”

She nodded, unwilling to say anything else, but held his stare.

“I’m not sure if you are familiar with the Soldier Enhancement Program,” he said.

“I know the basics about it, yes,” she said, evenly. “I understand it is still highly classified.”

“Not for us.”

“For Overwatch?” She asked, suddenly interested. If Overwatch could get a hold of the research done by the US Military, it’d be an incredible learning opportunity-

“No,” Reyes said, and sighed - His face suddenly weary, as if the weight of his life suddenly caught up with his bones, weighting them down. His scars were more pronounced, his crow’s feet sinking deep into his skin; Reyes wasn’t old, but he suddenly seemed _ancient_. “No, for its Alumni.”

 _Oh_ , Moira thought.

“Commander Morrison and I were both in this initiative before joining Overwatch. I trust you know,” he said, eyeing her as he crossed his arms, “this is highly classified information.”

“Of course,” Moira nodded. “I assume you need help understanding-”

“We know what has been done to us,” he said, curtly. “Demanded the files as soon as we joined Overwatch, and they were not in a position to deny us. The problem is, whatever they pumped us with has- affected us. Differently.”

Moira frowned, quirking her head to the side. “I do not understand.”

“Let me put it this way,” Reyes leaned back on his chair. “The goal was for the soldiers to have enhanced speed, stamina, strength, you name it. They altered the composition of our cellular structure in order for us to have a faster regeneration rate. In some it worked as planned. In others it didn’t. So this is where you come in.”

“Yes,” she said, not quite following what he wanted from her.

When she was a child, her grandmother had a funny way of saying she had a bad feeling about something. “It raised the hairs of me nape,” she’d say; in old times she’d be a bard, spinning stories as easily as she spun the wool from her sheeps. Moira was always a skeptic child, but there was no denying her Grandmother had a huge sway over what she did  - she never really grasped the meaning of that sentence, but sure as hell hearing it gave her pause.

She was never one for religious belief either. But being stared down by Reyes in a cramped room, she had a clear feeling of doom that raised the short hairs of her nape, and she suddenly understood what it was that her Nana wanted to warn her about decades before. “We Irish women, we know,” she’d say, lighting candles for her Saints and burning sage to herd off the evil spirits, “When time comes, you’ll know too, _macuisle_.”

On the horizon, round fat grey clouds elbowed each other as they cast shadows on the sea.

“I called you because- Angela won't do it. But.” He rubbed his eyes. _Angela_ got her attention - if he was on a first name basis, this was a deeply personal issue, one she wasn't sure she wanted to be a part of. “I am okay, more than okay. But Jack is- it's bad. Cells do have an amount they _can_ regenerate, and the faster they do it-”

“The faster they expire,” Moira said, understanding dawning on her. “Morrison is dying.”

The truth of her statement weighted Reyes' shoulders down. 

“He doesn’t want to admit it,” He said, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve been trying to convince him to seek help for _ages_ now. But last week-” he said, and paused, staring at the ceiling. Moira could see moisture pooling by his eyes, seeping through the wrinkles of his crow’s feet like water on cracked dry soil. “Well. Angela thought it was Lupus, and she was right. His left kidney started failing, and there’s no sign it’ll get better. It’s- It’s a matter of time, now.”

“I am sorry, Reyes,” she said, quietly. She’d been on his position far too many times for comfort, and knew exactly what that pain felt like - its tight hold on her heart, collapsing her ribcage into a single point. How often had she mistook grief for her failing heart?

Her father dead on the floor. She clutched the fabric of her t-shirt over her chest tight. _I think I’m gonna die,_ she said to the paramedics. When someone dies, it is as if the part of you they carried died too. She’d always been terrible at grief, but oh so familiar with it.  

“There has to be a way,” he whispered, running his hands through the short hair on his scalp. Were he a bit paler, the strength of his nails would leave angry red trails behind. “That’s why I’m calling _you_ . I know your history. I know _you_ refused to give into a disease that could kill you. Angela and Jack are happy to let life take its course, but I’m not. I _will_ not. We haven’t- I haven’t come this far to let this take him away from me.”

There it was, then - it was love. She shuddered, overwhelmed with the realization that Gabriel was everything she hoped she could’ve been; brave enough to stay through the worst and push forward the best. Her mother had died alone in a nursing home in Ireland because she’d been too afraid to face death.

She could have saved her mother.

She didn’t.

“What do you want me to do?” she said, lowly. Grey clouds pushing each other in the horizon, inching closer. “Are you going to convince Jack to let me test on him?”

“No,” Reyes shook his head, and she knew the answer before it crossed his lips. “He’s not the only one who got pumped up full of shit. Test on me. Find a fix to whatever they did to us. _Please._ ”

Later on, as she was recalling that moment, what would unnerve her the most was that no one believed that the idea came from Reyes himself - it was just so easy to describe her as the old manipulative hag, drafting everyone around her evil scheming. No one would believe she thought about telling him it was wrong, that it could get _both_ of them in trouble, that it could her license revoked without a second thought; no one would believe a single thought overran every concern in her mind:

She could have saved her mother.

She didn’t.

She could save Jack now.

“Okay,” she said, softly. “Okay,” she repeated, louder, as if sealing her fate. Reyes stared at her, mouth agape, and pulled one of her long, thin hands into his large and calloused one; he squeezed it tightly, unable to say anything.

“Thank you,” he whispered at last. “Moira, I- Thank you.”

She pointed her chin towards the window - the blue sky overcome by grey clouds, the stormy sea rising up against the shore. “There’s a big storm coming,” she said, eager to end the conversation, ”You should issue a warning.”

“Of course,” he said, letting go of her hand and turning back to his screen in lieu of a dismissal. “We will discuss this later on.”

“Yes,” she said, making a motion to rise - he stopped her short, raising one hand.

“One last thing,” he said, looking at her with something akin to pity, folding her stomach into itself. “Your thing with Angela-” she froze, “Get off that boat before it sinks.”

Moira said nothing, staring at Reyes in absolute shock. She was sure no one would have heard about it, but Blackwatch had ears in every walls; it made sense he would know. She wanted to ask why, but wasn’t sure she’d handle the truth - she swallowed.

“Commander,” she said, and excused herself from the room just in time to find a trash can in a hallway and empty the contents of her stomach inside of it.

  
  


“Have dinner with me,” Moira said, all straight sharp metal and no gold; she supposed she was in the very least an interesting figure, disheveled, heaving and mussed up by sweat. She ran to her lab because she felt she was on borrowed time, as if helping Reyes ignited a ticking bomb.

“Hm?” Said Angela, looking up from her paper to look at the figure Moira was presenting - tousled hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, untied tie and sleeves rolled up at elbows; she was the dictionary definition of haste, desperation, need, want, fear, panic-

“I said,” she said, and there was no knowing what life would prepare, but something about that day had raised the hairs of her nape, and MoirA was savvy enough to spot disaster before it striked - but not enough, it seemed, to save herself from it. The moon calling upon the tides, the clouds inching closer, the fading purple on Angela's neck. It was hard to breathe. “Have dinner with me.”

Angela smiled - her face could power up a whole city, all gold and gleaming emeralds and diamonds under the sun.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said.


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for being so late but alas here we go

_on the first day of love_

_you wrapped me in the word special_

  
  
  


2074

 

“ _Mira, Bruja_ ,” Sombra said, examining a crate in a corner. She had quick fingers, sharp tongue and a heart too big for her chest - Moira eyed her from where she stood, Biotic Grasp ready to fire at anyone who dared to pass in front of the door. She hated being in the field, but Reaper had reassured her; it was a simple infiltration mission, nothing to worry about, Sombra would be with her and she would be _fine_.

She would be _fine_ , yes, but her heart made its way up her throat anyhow. Her fragile bones weren’t meant to be out in the open, she figured; there was little source material left to fix them, and no one with the necessary expertise. Or, there was a single person, who’d rather see her dead.

She didn’t want to think about it. The room had a high ceiling, covered in dust and cobwebs; they had twenty minutes to get the intel they needed and leave. The three minute mark had passed, and Sombra was looking pretty confident.

“What?”

“Vinyls!” She said, pulling them up one by one. “Damn, how expensive are those?”

“Very,” she said, clipped. She would know.

“Damn, this would be worth so much cash,” Sombra said, kneeling down to inspect her recent findings. Moira eyed the computer running her scripts warily - she wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

“Weren’t you supposed to be hacking?”

“I am,” she said, tapping her temple. Her implants lighted up like lens flare, blinding - Moira never really quite understood what they were, but the itch to investigate was less urgent than the itch to get _away._ “Look! This seems important. I have no clue who they are, though. There’s one here by- Oh no, this one I know. The Beatles. Yellow Submarine, hah! And this one I know too- wait no, I don’t, actually. Janis Joplin-”

“Janis Joplin?” She said, interest peaked. “Which one?”

“Uh,” Sombra said, turning the album over on her hand. “ _I got dem ol' Kozmic Blues again mama_?”

“Really?” Moira said, walking closer. She reached for the vinyl, and Sombra handed it over absently.

The cover was made out of cardboard and old adhesive, fraying at the edges, but the plastic wrap had made a decent job of preserving the original print; the orange of the cover picture had faded quite a bit, but she could still make out the traces of hair and mouth that made up the singer's face. She traced the letters that made up the title - hell would freeze over before she could forget that.

“Didn’t take you to be one to like music, _bruja_ ,” Sombra said, casually, leaning over to the computer to check on her progress.

“Not much, no,” she said, absently. “My father did.”

Moira could see it, then, as if it was unfolding in front of her - her father, sitting down near the fire to warm up his sore joints, quietly sipping on his coffee as he hummed to the vinyl playing softly in the background. They were an antique, but he lived for them. Said they had been a gift from his grandmother, who in turn had gotten her first vinyls from her own grandmother; a family heirloom, he had insisted, just like bad joints and stubbornness. She couldn’t really understand the allure behind them, but found there was something soothing about sitting by the fireplace next to her father in absolute silence, not saying anything and letting the music do the talking.

Janis Joplin was one of his favorites. She turned the vinyl over, reading the tracklist. She remembered each and every one to the last lyrics, how they were a constant echo of her father in her life - up until she stopped listening to them altogether.

She never really noticed how deafening silence was until she remembered how it felt to hear music.

“Really?” Sombra said, suddenly interested. Moira cursed herself for giving her whatever little information it could be; she hoarded information as the dragons of old hoarded gold, and one could never tell what she would do with it.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said, clipped, but couldn’t find it in her to put the vinyl back in its place. “A large share of his collection got lost when I moved to Oasis, this one included. I don’t particularly care one way or another, it was a mere curiosity.”

“Sure,” Sombra said, wryly. “Take this one, then. Since you don’t have it.”

“How am I supposed to carry this back to the ship, pray tell?”

“We’re leaving in five minutes tops,” Sombra shrugged. “If you can’t handle that much weight, I can carry it for you, no biggie.”

“I am fine, thank you,” Moira said, dryly. She turned the vinyl back again - _I got dem ol’ Kozmic Blues again mama!_ , it said.

She figured taking it back home wouldn’t hurt.

  
  
  


2065

 

Moira figured, a little after her mother was hospitalized, how much she relied on her to calm down her overthinking. It’d been a decade long battle to force herself to calm her worrying, with moderate success - she found out that the least worrisome an event was, the more likely it would be she would be overcome with anxiety about it, to her immense chagrin.

As the clock on her wrist ticked closer to six, she found inviting Angela over to dinner was a near death experience.

She worried her lower lip, pacing around her quarter’s small living room. She had rounded her house six times already, making sure everything was clean and exactly on the spot it needed to be. The counter would lose its varnish if she wiped it one more time, and yet her fingers itched for the rag just to make sure it-

The doorbell rang, and she could swear her heart stopped.

“Hey!” Angela said, as soon as she opened her door. She wore a light, flowy yellow dress, hanging loosely on her frame and displaying the soft curve of her sternum, where a small pearl pendant hung from a thin, delicate golden chain. She smelled of roses, and Moira was keenly aware she smelled like antiseptic and cleaning wipes - she shoved her hands inside her pockets. Angela was so soft. She felt the rough skin of her palms, dried out of their moisture, and Reyes’ voice echoed in her ears. Jump off of that boat before it sinks - hold on to the anchor and jump into the sea. She swallowed.

“Hey,” she said, weakly, stepping aside for Angela to come in - she frowned.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Angela asked, warily. “You don’t look very comfortable.”

“I’m not,” Moira said, simply. “I’m not used to having people over. But-”

“I can still leave,” Angela offered. Her smile faltered just enough for Moira to swallow her own fear.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not- I’m not used to. This. But it’s okay, because it’s you. Besides,” she cleared her throat, eager for a change of subject, “The salmon is already in the oven, and I’ve spread garlic butter over most of it for you. I don’t make enough money to waste salmon like that.”

“You do and you know it,” Angela shook her head softly. “Can I come in, then?”

Moira didn’t answer, but stepped away from her door and turned on her back towards the small kitchen in the corner, pretending to fiddle with the food not to see Angela taking her quarters in. It was still mostly bare, even after years of being lived in - the fact was that Moira didn’t really feel at home ever since she left her mother’s home in Ireland. With her mother gone there was no home to go back to, and this would have to do. Home was seldom a place, but always a person; when Moira took her eyes away from the food she knew it was ready and saw Angela looking over the picture frames over her desk, she could feel it - the warmth, the prospect of safety, the soft curve of her neck exposed by her high ponytail. Get off that boat before it sinks, her chest ached. And yet.

“Is that you?” Angela asked, leaning over to one of the pictures - a small framed photo of when she was around nine, toothy grin missing a front tooth and thick ponytails tied up with identical bows, riding a Shire horse on a bright summer day. Moira felt her cheeks heating, and she cleared her throat.

“Yes,” she said, awkwardly.

“Oh my _God_ ,” Angela said, giggling. “Moira, this is absolutely _adorable_! Look at your smile! And oh, look at this one!” She said, picking another frame up - this one from her late teens, sitting side by side with her grandmother and mother on Hyde Park in London. Her hair was long enough to reach her waist, fiery red and bone straight, and her clothes hung awkwardly on her frame. “Schatzi, your hair!”

“Yes, I know,” she said, dryly.

“When was this?”

“Uh,” Moira said, walking closer and tipping the frame towards her. “When I was seventeen? Or so. I had just passed my A-Levels, went to a concert in London. I think it was- It was Lady Gaga?”

“Oh?” Angela smiled. “Never took you for a fan.”

“I’m not,” she shrugged. “Mum was. I got to attend a lecture on King’s College, however, which she sat through with me, so I guess we were even.”

“That’s adorable,” she said, looking over the desk - a dozen frames stood, sharing parts of her life she never felt comfortable showing anyone. “I didn’t know you liked picture frames.”

“I don’t,” she said. “Nana did. Those are hers, all things that got sent to me when my Mother died.”

“Ah,” Angela said, suddenly uncomfortable, and placed her picture right on the desk. “All of this…” She gestured to the corner shelf, completely overrun with vinyls and a small player next to her internet modem.

“Yeah,” Moira shrugged. “Nana’s things and Dad’s things all stayed with Mum. When she died-”

“You got it all,” Angela said, biting her lower lip. “For what it’s worth, it is a very nice collection. Mind if I put a Vinyl on?”

Moira felt the protest climbing up her throat, her hand rising on instinct as she took a step closer to Angela. Truth was, the turntable wasn’t turn on ever since her father died; she could say she wasn’t sure it would even work, but deep down she knew - it was her instinct to forbid other people from touching on what mattered to her the most. Angela eyed her, one eyebrow arched, and Moira felt her body tense, words scrambling to come up her throat-

“My father died from an aortic dissection,” she blurted, instantly regretting her choice of words.

“Oh, _yikes_ ,” Angela shivered from where she was leaning down towards the turntable. “How old?”

“I was nine,” she shrugged, eyes stuck to the old technology piece, “When the aorta ripped he was helping me with a sprained foot and he fell right on top of me. I couldn’t- I couldn’t move, I was trapped. In place. So I couldn’t-”

“Call anyone,” Angela said, standing straight and eyeing her with something akin to pity or pain. “How- How long did it take?”

“Fifteen minutes and thirty-one seconds,” She answered, mouth dry and lips like parchment. She nodded towards the turntable. “That was his. Ever since he died, I couldn’t use it.”

“Oh _God_ ,” Angela said, stepping closer and cupping her face with her hands. They were rough from work, but so very warm around her cheeks, and Moira found herself looping one hand around her wrist loosely. “Moira, I am so sorry. We don’t need to. I just thought some background noise would be nice-”

“I know,” Moira whispered. “I’ve always wanted- wanted to. But I couldn’t. I don’t even know if it works.”

“I could try,” Angela said, softly. “That’s it, if you want.”

If you want, the words echoed in her head - bit by bit Angela took ownership of her heart, her body, her soul. She shared more with her than she had ever shared with everyone in this wide lonely world. She liked solitude, but never knew how lonely she had been until Angela had stormed into her life, casting light where once was darkness. She felt as if she had lived her entire life in the dark and suddenly in came the Dawn, tinting the sky purple yellow red and pink, golden clouds lazily bumping each other as the sun washed over her bones, warming her from inside out. How much of herself would she be able to share without shattering in a million pieces, never to be put together again? Angela never demanded, and yet she always gave in willingly, openly, prying her own ribcage open to pour out her heart’s contents as if it was the breaking of a dam. Each soft look of eyes broke her apart even more - she feared one day she would become dust.

She inhaled, deeply, and closed her eyes.

“If you could,” She said, finally, voice shaking, “It’d be nice.”

Angela smiled, giving her a quick kiss on the lips.

“I know how hard it is for you to open up,” she mumbled, “But I appreciate it. Thank you, _Schatzi_.”

Moira nodded, throat too tight to say anything else. She turned around and start to set the table, delicately placing plates and glasses and forks until a hoarse voice filled the room - the soft sound of the vinyl and the needle coaxing out the tunes from the hard plastic disc.

“Janis Joplin?” She asked - the volume of the turntable was low, barely an afterthought, and Angela walked closer.

“One of my favorite singers, actually,” She said, sitting down and inspecting the plate. “Oh, nice. What is this?”

“Salmon, carrot puree and quinoa salad,” Moira said, sitting in front of her. “Didn’t know you could work a turntable, either.”

“Moira, it’s not quantum science,” Angela said, rolling her eyes. “There’s a place for a vinyl, a needle and an _on_ button. I’m afraid I had to unplug your modem, though. So no internet.”

“I’ll have to find something else to entertain myself, then,” Moira said, absently. Angela looked at her intently, lips curling into a smirk.

“I’m pretty sure you’ll find something,” she said. “Can I-”

“Suit yourself,” Moira nodded. There was a brief silence while the both of them chewed her food, and Angela let her head fall into her hands.

“Holy _shit,_ Moira, this is fucking _incredible_ ,” she moaned. “This is the kind of food that would take my non-observant ass to the synagogue, I’ll tell you.”

“Hush,” Moira mumbled, feeling her cheeks heat. Angela smiled, then - wide, clear and happy.

“It’s true,” she said. “I’m happy. I’m happy you invited me over, I’m happy you made me dinner, and I’m happy you gave me the chance to get to know you.”

Moira paused, feeling herself choke up at the words. In all her daydreaming, she could never-

Angela reached out for her hand from across the table, and she took it.

 

  


Late into the night, when the both of them were lying on bed, Angela curled on her chest and softly traced patterns on her bare chest, connecting her freckles with the scars and the paths the droplets of sweat made along her skin. It was high night, and the lamp cast flickering lights on her face, but her eyes gleamed blue as the sea that crashed softly against the rocks of Gibraltar.

“Do you know what my minor was?”

“Hm?”

“In college,” Angela said, turning around to rest her face on her hands. “Guess what was my minor.”  
“I don’t know,” Moira said, brain still foggy from her orgasm.

“Women’s studies.”  
“Really?” Moira said, arching an eyebrow.

“It was the only one I could find a spot,” Angela shrugged. “But I ended up liking it eventually. We read a lot of nice things.”

“I believe you,” she said. “But why bring this up now?”

“I was thinking,” Angela said, pausing - her silence stretched for a heartbeat,and her lips found the soft skin of Moira’s neck before she let her body melt around Moira once more. “There was one book I read once. Undoing Gender, I think. About how we all lead precarious lives, and how we need each other in other to give our life meaning.”

“If we’re gonna talk philosophy, I’d like to be a bit more awake for that, _Storeen_.”

Pause, silence, inhale.

“What was that?”

“Hm?”

“What you just called me,” Angela said, voice thick. “Shitoren?”'

“ _Storeen_ ,” Moira repeated, slowly. She opened her eyes to see Angela looking at her with an unreadable expression, one she couldn’t decipher even if she were fully awake. “It means little treasure,” she said, sheepishly. _“_ I know enough German to know what _Schatzi_ means.”

Angela didn’t answer - the silence was comfortable, and Moira could feel the talons of sleep drag her away from consciousness. From the turntable, Janis Joplin’s hoarse voice reminded her of times far easier than her present - but the warmth against her body was nice, and she thought that even though life hadn’t been the easiest road to travel, she could get used to it. To this.

 _“If I could pray, and I try dear,”_ Angela sang softly on her ear, _“You might come back home, home to me…”_

 

 

Sometimes, when Angela wasn’t looking, Moira would trace the outline of her features with her eyes, sighing. The soft nose, the deft hands, the thick hair. She knew how it felt to have it all under her hands, knew how it was to wake up smothered in a mass of golden blonde strands. She could smell it everywhere - her room, her house, her clothes, herself. She reeked of Angela - but if anyone noticed anything, they were very discreet about it.

Sometimes, when Angela was gone for Zurich, they would talk well into the night on their phones, until one of them invariably fell asleep. Moira could see little pieces of her scattered around her life - the extra toothbrush in her bathroom, the lab coat forgotten by her desk, the lazy smiles Angela would leave behind in the morning, the shivers she let melt into the bed late into the night, the moonlight glowing on pale skin.

Sometimes Moira wondered what would happen if she just got up from her desk, marched to Angela’s side, and kissed her like they belonged to each other. The parallel universe they constructed inside their quarters never made out of the door, but she couldn’t help but wonder what would it be like-

Sometimes Moira wondered what would be like to be allowed to love someone like Angela out in the open.

Most times, however, Moira would swallow her wondering down with her vicodin and try to ignore the smell of rose water and lemongrass stuck to her skin.

  
  


“Open up.”

“That’s what _she_ said.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Moira rolled her eyes, “Reyes, I just need your DNA sample. That’s all I ask.”

Reyes smiled, toothy grin full of mischief and no bite, but took the cotton swab of her hand and rubbed it against the walls of his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said, sighing, and placing the swab inside a tube for testing. “I think I’ve made some significant progress. I’ve narrowed down the genes that could possibly be responsible for the problem to eight, but there are three i’m placing my bets on. I think I’ll be able to have a definitive answer by next month.”

“All of the shit they pumped me with, and all that they changed were only eight genes?” Reyes scoffed. “Thought they would be more thorough than that.

“I did not say that,” Moira answered, dryly. “The Soldier Enhancement Initiative saw your DNA as a faulty code that couldn’t be fixed, and decided it was better to write it all again than to troubleshoot. Crude work, in my opinion. I thought the U.S Military would have more finesse.”

“Moira,” Reyes arched an eyebrow. “It’s the Army. Did you know we rub mud on our faces during boot camp as camouflage?”

She paused, feeling a weird mix of disgust, doubt and shame for not thinking of something so obvious before. “In any cases, what _I_ said,” she said, ripping her latex gloves off her hands and throwing them in the trash can. “Is that there are eight specifically that can be the source of Morrison’s problem. How is he, by the way?”

Reyes face was like one of those pictures of erosion she remembered from school-level science textbooks - wrinkles and scars forming deep grooves into the land that once was whole, but now was open, spent and raw. This is what happens when humans don’t care for the land, the book had said, it dries and crumbles as if wounded. His skin was the color of the ground ready to receive the seeds of a new crop, but way too overworked to sustain it. He pulled his beanie, rubbed his eyes. Reyes was never one to shy away from his tears. He felt and felt plenty, unashamedly, and when he cried the dark circles under his eyes reminded her of the bogs from Ireland - moist blackened dirt hiding thousand-year-old bodies with secrets buried so deep within their tanned skins that they would never ever speak up unless dug up to the surface.

Like Reyes himself.

“Angela found a way to slow down the kidney failure,” He said, tiredly. “He’s down to two dialysis cycles a month, which is far better than what we first expected and gives _us_ a bit more time. His hair is thinning too.”

“That’s a very common side effect of lupus,” Moira said.

“So we’ve been told,” Reyes shrugged. “I told him it’s fine, he can rock the shaved head as much as I do, but I can see it’s putting him down. Like it’s a physical reminder, you know? He doesn’t know we’re doing this. He’s already preparing Ana for taking on his role. As if she already doesn’t,” he rolled his eyes.

Moira bit her lower lip, pondering, measuring her words. There were rumors, she heard; That Reyes was jealous, that he wanted the spot of Commander for himself. Over the last days she had a rare opportunity to glimpse into the vast abyss that was Gabriel Reyes - she wondered how much of his good natured demeanor was a mere façade. Or yet, how much of herself could she find in him.

She gazed into the abyss-

“You want to ask something, Moira?” he asked, placing his beanie back in place.

“Do you-” She said, stumbling. “Do you ever wish you were Jack?”

She regretted the words as soon as they rolled from her tongue. That wasn’t what she meant, and she braced herself for the impact - she wanted to know if he ever wished to be good enough of a person to have the right to go public with his love. She couldn’t, hated far too much to stain Angela’s reputation with her meddling. And yet. She suckled on her lower lip, lowering her eyes.

Reyes stared at her, intently; his deep black eyes the very abyss she had gazed into.

“No one can ruin what they don’t know,” he said, quietly. “I know what you mean. I knew it was a foolish idea, and hell if it still isn’t one, but I took the leap. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess. If I have to spend a lifetime in the shadows to have Jack for myself,” he shrugged, leaping off the examination table, “Then I guess that’ll do it. See ya next week, doc.”

She watched him as he left, feeling her head heavy and her heart light. That he understood her through her clumsiness was a miracle on its own - that he found in him to offer her kindness, even more so.

She swallowed deeply, feeling her leg complain for standing up for so long, and rubbed her hips absently, wondering. A small price to pay, he’d said.

Maybe it was, indeed.

  


 

Afternoon slowly gave way into night - Moira’s leg went from being a mere nuisance to sending sharp slivers of pain up her spine. She knew exactly what it was: sciatica pain from a herniated disc, a direct result of Marfan Syndrome; at that point, just as most things were in her life. So there she was - mind reeling from the sharp turn her life had steered to the past month, her leg screaming bloody murder at her poor nerves and her bed feeling strangely cold without someone else to fill the empty space.

She eyed her quarters. Coat, toothbrush, green tea, book. All pieces of Angela scattered around.

And yet-

There was a soft knock on the door. She opened it with her Communicator, to see-

Angela. Standing at the door looking like a perfect savior angel, and Moira whimpered in pain.

“ _Schatzi,_ are you okay?” She asks, dropping her eyes to her thin frame curled around the bed.

“Sciatica,” she mumbled, hidden beneath the covers. “Herniated disc.”

“Oh dear,” Angela said, sitting on the edge of the bed and softly pushing her hair away from her face. “Can’t you have it operated?”

“I did,” She sniffed. “But I had surgery to fix my scoliosis when I was a child, so the doctor made a mistake-”

“And now your sciatica is chronic,” Angela grimaced. “Well shit. I’m so sorry, Moira.”

“It’s fine,” she said, even though they both knew it wasn’t. She felt as if there were thousands of needles digging into her flesh, the numbness setting in from her knee outwards. “I just have to. Stay here. Quiet.”

“Right,” Angela said, standing up. “You can stay very quiet, but in a warm bath. I’m gonna run one for you, okay?”

“You really don’t have to,” Moira said, but Angela was already halfway towards the bathroom - she sighed, figuring she didn’t have the energy to argue. She fished her vicodin out of her nightstand, placing yet another one under her tongue. It’d been years since anyone took care of her like this, and if she closed her eyes and focused elsewhere, she could forget it was only for a few moments.

She let herself bury even more into her pillows, hearing Angela fiddling with the bathtub. Sleep was too fickle, scared away by the burning feeling in the back of her thigh, but she sighed deeply. In normal situations she’d feel ashamed of leaning on Angela too much, but now-

“ _Schatzi_ ,” Angela whispered in her ear. “ _Komm_.”

“Hmhmm,” She mumbled, slowly sitting on the bed. The pain on her leg sent a sharp stab up her spine - she groaned, holding the hem of her shirt tightly, until she felt soft hands upon her own.

“Let me,” Angela whispered, gently coaxing her to stand - deft fingers made quick work of taking off her clothes and guiding her towards the bathtub. In her pain and medication haze, she was vaguely aware she _should_ feel at least ashamed of being undressed and parading around her quarters with no clothes to her name; but couldn’t find it in her. Or - she couldn’t find the necessary energy to care. The pain was encompassing - flaring up in her thighs up to her spine, it ached in her hips and made her wish desperately for the morphine safely locked inside her lab-

Angela helped her inside the tub, and she sighed contently. The water was slippery - epsom salts? - but she didn’t care, letting her head rest on the tiles behind her. Wet strands stuck to the beige walls, looking like spilled blood.

“I can rub some ice on it later,” Angela said, softly. “For now, you just rest. I’ll be here when you’re done.”

Looking back, Moira would wonder what made her do what she did next. Maybe it was the medicine, maybe it was a strange kind of magic, or maybe she was dreaming of such kindness and love. But she took her hand from the tub and offered it to Angela, who eyed her fingers curiously.

“Stay,” she asked, quietly. “Please. You- You make it better.”

Angela eyed her intently, drawing in a sharp breath.

And reached for her hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grip tight to this fluff friends things will get pretty ugly from now on


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buttons: half your fic would be avoided if someone had given Moira antidepressants  
> snek: I should share my zoloft then   
> buttons: bitch please. she has evolved well into the Tricyclic antidepressants by now

_ on the last day of love _

_ my heart cracked inside my body _

 

2074

“Do you hate me?”

Moira didn’t have to turn to know who it was - the smell of decay, iodine and mold was pungent enough as to be a telltale sign of who was calling her attention. She took a slow drag of her cigarette, pondering.

“Why do you ask?” 

“Because,” Gabriel said. On the corner of her vision, she could see the whole Reaper ensemble Gabriel had taken upon himself. The overly-padded armor to protect his paper thin skin. The thick gloves to hide the absence of nails. The mask to hide what a distorted mess his face had become. He should have died at the explosion, and yet Moira saved him even without meaning to. 

Sometimes, she wondered if he was better off dead. 

“Because is not an adequate answer,” she said, exhaling more smoke. It felt rebellious to gamble with her health like that. She didn’t mind. “Nor is it an adequate question.” 

He said nothing, barely moving. She flicked the end of the cigarette absently, watching the ash falling to the snow-covered floor. 

“Call it a curiosity,” he said, finally. 

“I don’t have an answer to give you,” she said, curtly. 

“Do you ever wonder if I can die?” 

She eyed him warily, taking another drag from her cigarette. Sombra and Lacroix were working their magic inside the warehouse, and she wondered why exactly they needed her here. With Sombra’s wit and Lacroix’s silence, it was almost as if she was Blackwatch once more, and if she closed her eyes she could imagine the last years didn’t happen, that her entire bloody life didn’t just become a single trainwreck, and that Reyes wasn’t the one to blame for it. 

“You’re full of questions today,” she said, vaguely. 

“And you’re not answering any of them,” he answered. 

Moira shook her head, flicking her cigarette once more. The smell and feel of nicotine were overwhelming, and if she smoked, she couldn’t smell the ghost of lemongrass and rose water still stuck to her skin, years later. 

“How can I let you die, Gabe?” She asked, throwing the flickering cigarette butt on the ground and stomping on it with her heel to kill the fire and shivered. “After all you’ve done to me?”

“Even more of a reason to do it.”

“Not quite, no,” she said, finally eyeing the gaping holes of his mask. Empty, dark, and lifeless. The barn owl stared at her back, telling of pain and suffering to come. “You’re the only one I have left, Gabe.”

“Don’t you think it’s cruel to leave me like this, though?” He said, raising one hand. His entire arm became dust and smoke, flickering around the dark winter night. She knew how much it hurt doing that, and why he did it anyhow was lost on her. 

“I don’t think you quite get what I mean,” she said, dryly. He put his arm together, sighing. 

“And what is that?” 

“What I mean,” she said, and paused - iodine lemongrass nicotine snow ash decomposition and rosewater clouding her nose and watering her eyes. She felt her stomach churning in itself, begging for release of all she ate as if her carefully chosen food was poison. It had been increasingly harder to find it in her to eat these days. And yet. 

“What I mean,” she continued, softly, “Is that you don’t get to take everything I’ve ever loved from me and die, Gabe. Don’t you think it’s cruel to make me this lonely and rest in peace while I have to stay on my own?” 

He didn’t answer - a bang and a scream came from inside the warehouse, and Lacroix landed right in front of them. 

“Target eliminated,” she informed. 

“Then we move,” Reyes said, and the smoke he became was indistinguishable from the dark night sky. 

  
  


 

2065

Angela was waiting on her bed in full midnight blue sweatpants, standard-issue Overwatch t-shirt, reading glasses perched on top of the slight upwards curve of her nose and a book open on her lap. 

“What the- Bloody hell,  _ Storín, _ ” Moira gasped, holding to the door handle as if it was an anchor to steady her swaying frame. She  _ detested _ being scared, but figured she had enough reason to do so - her heart was failing as it was, and it didn’t need more reason to be overworked than it already had. 

“Seen a ghost?” Angela says, arching one eyebrow. Moira coughed, clearing her throat, and let herself in her apartment, toeing off her shoes as she closed the door behind her. 

“No,” she said. “Just wasn’t expecting you until midnight or so.”

“I did get here at midnight,” Angela said, dryly. “You were the one who weren’t here.” 

“What time is it?” She asked, absently, shrugging off her coat and throwing it on the appropriate bin for potentially toxic items of clothing. 

“Three in the morning,” Angela said. “What kept you so long?” 

_ Reyes _ , Moira didn’t say. They stayed up looking over the latest results of his bloodwork, discussing what to do from then on. Moira was pretty sure she’d got the affecting gene down, and offered her conclusions to Reyes. She figured he would then introduce the subject to Amari and Morrison - how, exactly, she didn’t know, nor did she care. It wasn’t her job. Her job was to give results, and that she did. 

“Work,” she said, simply. “Sorry. I lost track of time.” 

Angela didn’t answer - she stared her down, eyeing her with something she couldn’t quite pinpoint what, but if the way her stomach dropped to the floor was any indication, it wasn’t anything good. 

“ _ Storín _ ?” She called, tentatively. 

“Does it have to do with Reyes, Moira?” Angela asked.

The hair on her nape stood up on their own accord, dread gripping her heart. Moira swallowed, feeling as if she was going through a test. 

“It does,” she said, softly. And she doesn’t know how, but the lie finds its way into her mouth before she could stop it, wraps itself around her tongue and seeps into her teeth, bittersweet and salty and heavy, “He wants my help figuring if his DNA change has affected some predispositions he had to melanoma and Huntington’s.”

“And then what?” 

“Remove it, I guess,” Moira shrugged, tensing upon the realization of what she just said. “Maybe it is possible, maybe it isn’t, I don’t know yet. I don’t even know if the hypothesis is true, and if it is, there’s nothing I can do with it. The whole thing is confidential as it is.” 

Angela narrowed her eyes, closing the book on her lap. It never snowed in Gibraltar, and yet it was an especially chilly november day - she even had her socks on, which was rare. 

“And this has nothing to do with Morrison’s condition?” 

“It does,” Moira said, convincing herself a half-truth was not a lie. “He never thought of the possibility until Morrison’s diagnosis came up. Something which, by the way, is also confidential.” 

“It is. That’s why I am surprised you even know about it to begin with.” 

She could feel something thrumming under the surface, something twisted and ugly and so unlike Angela she felt as if it was foreign, foreign to that room, foreign to the two of them. She eyed Angela sitting cross legged on the bed, the half eaten dinner by the table, the messy notes scrawled on her desk, and figured Angela wanted to find something out, but couldn’t ask her directly. The pent up question was ugly, and there was an argument orbiting the both of them. Moira made a conscious decision not to engage, and raised her hands. 

“ _ Storín, _ ” she whispered quietly, pleadingly. “What do you want from me?” 

Angela sighed, taking the glasses off of her face and rubbing her eyes. It was three in the morning and if Moira was right (she often was), Angela hadn’t slept in more than a day. Zurich must’ve been hell on Earth, and all Moira wanted to do was lay down and trace the outlines of her body with her lips. 

“Sorry, babe,” she said. “It’s been a rough couple of days, and I couldn’t find you anywhere these past weeks. You’re always down at Blackwatch doing God knows what, and I’m all alone at the lab-”

“Are you trying to tell me you miss me?” Moira asks, confused. “Because that didn’t sound like it. That sounded like you were mad.”

“I am mad at myself for being jealous,” she said, giving her a small smile. 

“Jealous?” 

“Yeah. Sometimes I forget you have a brilliant head and other people might need it too,” she laughed, shaking her head and patting the space next to her on the bed. “Come here.”

Moira took off her tie and let herself fall on the mattress. Her eyes drifted to the book closed on Angela’s lap. 

“Greek Mythology?”

“Needed to catch up with the nerd I’m dating,” Angela said, smiling. “Mythology fan like you wouldn’t believe.”

Moira snorted, inching closer to lay her head on Angela’s thigh, inhaling the scent of her shampoo. Angela ran her hands through her hair, sighing softly. 

“Your hair is getting longer,” she commented. 

“Haven’t had the time to get a haircut,” she said. “What were you reading about?” 

“Icarus,” Angela said. “I knew the basics, but the full story is actually really funny, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said, pushing the book away from her lap to lay Moira’s head properly on it. “First there is a king who thinks he can cheat a  _ god _ . And then said god is like hey, I know how I’m getting my revenge:  _ zoophilia.” _

“That’s greek mythology for you.”

“That’s why I’m not a fan,” she wrinkled her nose. “And then all of this ends with Icarus being the ancient equivalent of a rebellious teenager-”

“I like Icarus,” Moira said, quietly. 

There was a silence, a pregnant pause, as if the moment suddenly turned too delicate for unthought words. 

“Why?” Angela asked, and Moira couldn’t meet her eye. 

“Icarus lived in a world where white bulls came out of the sea and impregnated queens,” Moira shrugged. “We think it is impossible for Icarus to reach the sun, because it is to us. But it wasn’t for him. So he lived in a dark labyrinth for all his life, and when he comes out, the first thing he sees is the sun. And who could blame him for falling in love with it? He thought the sun was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he accepted the risk, and the gods could’ve taken pity on him, or Helios could’ve saved him. That was all  _ possible _ . But they didn’t, and he crashed and died. And I think this is the most beautiful thing, the most human thing, to fall in love with something there is little to no chance of ever happening, but accepting the risk of even death just because there’s one small possibility that it might work out. There’s this one small hope of a miracle. I guess Icarus was still hoping for that miracle right up until the moment he brained himself on a rock or what not, but in the end none of us are actually better than him.”

Pause, silence, sigh. 

“Wow,” Angela said. “I’d never think this could be so beautiful.”

Moira said nothing, just hummed absently. 

“But,” she continued. “I wouldn’t take you as one to believe in miracles anyhow. Or to believe there’s anything impossible for you.”

“I didn’t,” Moira said, sitting up and swallowing. “But- But the Sun came to me, and you’re here now.”

“Oh Moira,” Angela said, voice thick, and she leaned closer to kiss her eyelids, her lips, her palms, the curve of her neck, “Oh  _ Schatzi _ , you’re gonna break my heart saying things like this to me.” 

Moira didn’t answer, kissing her freckles, her knuckles, the space right below her earlobes as if her lips were touching something precious and rare and sacred. On the back of her mind, something told her Icarus would always crash and drown. 

Until that happened, she would hold tight to the sun as she could. 

  
  
  


 

There were some interesting facts about Gabriel Vítor Reyes that, if anything, Moira thought was valuable information to know about who she was working with.

He took his coffee black, but would fill as much as half the cup with sugar. He had a sweet tooth like any other and would sneakily hide candy corn all over the examination room she had occupied at the basement of Gibraltar, where Blackwatch had its own headquarters.

He loved candy corn. Moira didn’t get it. 

He had a sense of humor based upon silly wordplays and sexual innuendos, which made Moira sure he somehow his emotional and cognitive behavior had stuck at the approximate age of twelve. If she was to be honest, however, she merely pretended to be offended at the markedly bad jokes he liked to tell. 

Reyes never told her a full truth, but never lied either. He walked a dangerous path between truth and lie, threading on omission. Moira knew as much as she needed to know and what she needed to know he alone decided. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, but that was true for all of Overwatch, and he never gave her any reason to feel wary, even though sometimes it was only the two of them for  long hours in the lab. He would blabber on  and on  as she worked. She pretended to be worked up about the noise, but welcomed the distraction and the timely reminders to eat and sleep. 

More importantly, Gabriel Reyes was a creature of heart. He loved and he loved deeply, willing to do whatever it took to save the ones he loved. Gabriel Reyes was a good man.  

Years in the future, she would remember him like he was now, sprawled on a stretcher as she worked, popping candy corn into his mouth and rambling on about something she didn’t know exactly what was. It would hurt, as most things did. History is written upon the deaths of good men, and yet. 

“Gabriel?” she called, holding a few of the papers she had printed in front of her face. “Can I ask you a question?” 

“You can ask me anything, I’m just not sure I can answer,” he said, and winked. Moira sighed, lowering the paper to her lap and remembering Angela’s behavior the previous night. She was hiding something, Moira knew. 

“Why did you tell me to let go of Angela?” She asked, quietly. 

He sat up on the stretcher, all remnants of fun dripping out his lips. He rested his elbows on his folded knees, pondering. 

“Why do you ask?” he said, smirking. “You did the exact opposite of what I told you to do.” 

“Yes,” she said, wryly. “But I want to know.”

“Because,” he answered, sighing. There was a pause, and Moira arched an eyebrow. 

“Because?”

“Look, Moira,” he said, rubbing his face with one hand. It was in moments like this she could see his true age, the weariness on his skin and the weight on his bones. The modern version of Atlas, silently and diligently doing the work to keep everyone afloat. “Angela is a great doctor, and Angela is a great person, but Angela isn’t very- malleable. She has her own rules and can be very judgemental when you don’t abide by them. You, on the other hand,” he made a vague gesture with his hand, indicating the room around them, “You see something that needs to be done and you do it, damned be the consequences. Angela cares about the  _ how _ , you care about the results. So one day there will come a day where Angela will have a problem with the way you work, and maybe she’ll be right, but even if she is wrong she won’t admit that to you. And to you specifically, that’s a problem.” 

“What do you mean?” She swallowed. 

“I mean what I said,” Reyes shrugged. “You are rough around the edges, Moira. Sometimes you don’t really know how to tread around people, but you have a good heart and you know the right thing to be done. You don’t think about it, you just do it. Which is remarkable, really. But Angela follows things by the book as if the book puts her on top of a moral mountain… I don’t know, really,” he said, finally. “You two make a beautiful couple, but I think maybe your heart is a bit too fragile to be given away so carelessly.”

“I didn’t know you were concerned by that,” she said, quietly, mind reeling from what he had just said. 

“I worry about all of you,” he said, winking, and jumped out of the stretcher in a fluid motion. For someone that large, Reyes was surprisingly graceful. “Jesse keeps calling me  _ dad _ . It’s unnerving, but I guess it’s somewhat true.”

“Yeah,” she answered, not knowing what to think. 

“I’m also just an old gay man rambling,” he offered, sensing her unease. “You can ignore me, as you’ve been doing for the past months or so.” 

“Arse.” 

“Been called worse,” he winked, then looked outside of the window, pondering something. “Look, I know you said you wanted to discuss your results, and I want to, but- I don’t think this is the place.” 

Moira arched one eyebrow, and he sighed. 

“Let’s go out in the city next week. I’ll be back in Zurich tomorrow, so I’ll check in on Jack and Ana, and know how much time we have. Besides, walls have years, yadda yadda. I hear there’s a great picnic spot out on the coast.”

“I’m not going on a picnic with you,” Moira frowned. 

“Coffee, then,” he smiled. “Just… out of the base. Okay?” 

She nodded, then watched his back as he waved goodbye and left the room, running her hands through her nape to calm down the goosebumps on her scalp. 

  
  
  


 

Hidden inside her desk drawer - a thin gold chain with a small pair of wings as pendant, studded with what seemed to be aquamarines as blue as Angela’s eyes. Stuck to it, a note. 

_ I think you got it wrong,  _ it said,  _ because I’m falling hard for you. _

Moira strapped the necklace around her neck and hid it under shirt, where no one could see that she wore her heart on her sleeve and the love that seeped into her bones, and thought she never would imagine one day she could be so warm. 

  
  


 

 

Icarus was swallowed by the sea, she thought, eyeing the tide and the waves crashing on the rocks on the beach. Even if it was near winter, the beaches in Gibraltar were always much more tropical than Ireland. A flash of silver and white, an albatroz dipping into the water to fish a meal for the day, the sun glimmering as it set on the horizon - the sea she remembered was stormy and cloudy and dangerous, high sharp mountains falling straight to the pointed rocks at the bottom of the ocean, where mermaids and selkies awaited to carry away the bodies of the less than fortunate. 

For some reason, when she thought of Icarus, she always imagined him crashing on the cliffs near her home, each delicate wing breaking against the stones and being washed out into the sea, swallowed by Poseidon. And even though she knew now that Ikaria was much more like Gibraltar than Ireland, and Icarus would likely be washed up on a shore, she couldn’t help but thinking about it like that - the tall mountains, the sharp cliffs, the angry sea, as if Poseidon himself couldn’t believe Icarus for letting himself believe. She inhaled deeply, feeling the salt on her skin as she cradled her coffee with her cold hands.

Reyes pulled a cigarette from his pocket, offering her. 

“No, thank you.”

“You don’t smoke?” He asked, searching his coat for a lighter. “Huh. I could swear you would smoke.” 

“I already gamble enough with death as it is,” she said, dryly, taking a sip of her coffee. “How are things?” 

He closed his eyes, sighed. 

“Did you know I’m from SoCal?” 

She hummed, not missing how he dodged the question. 

“I used to surf,” he said, quietly, taking a drag of his cigarette and looking at the sunset. It was a quiet day, only the birds and the sea for background music. Every once in a while a car would pass in the avenue behind the bench they sat upon. “Like, every single day, before the sun was even up. When I met Jack in the Army, he had never even seen the sea. Can you believe this?” 

“America is rather large,” she offered. 

“Yeah,” he exhaled, the smoke in the air forming shapes as if it begged to be the source of some divination. “He was smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana, and then joined the Army and finally saw something of the world. So one day, we had a day off, right? And we were in L.A, so I was like, hey Jack, what do you think about go surfing? And he made this face,” Gabriel smiled, shaking his head fondly, “Like a deer caught in the headlights, and he was like, I’ve never been swimming in the sea. I swear, that hurt my Californian ass.”

“I bet it did,” Moira said, softly. Reyes inhaled more smoke, exhaled it, and sighed. 

“He was so scared of the sea,” he continued. Cigarette ash fell on his lap and his eyes filled with tears he didn’t bother shedding. “He was scared of anything he couldn’t control, and I promised him I would drag his ass out of the water if I had to, and that I was basically a fish by then, and that I worked all my summers as a lifeguard. I told him a thousand things to make him believe he was safe with me, and just as soon as he stepped into the sea, this  _ huge _ wave came and almost threw him off balance, and he was so  _ shocked _ ,” he laughed. There were twin paths of tears on his tears. “I kissed him for the first time right then. And I kept protecting him until now.” 

Moira paused, unsure of what to say. 

“What do you mean, Gabe?” She whispered, quietly. 

“I got there in Zurich and there was a brief moment where he didn’t know who I was,” Gabriel said, simply. “I asked Ana and apparently, his body is going haywire and he’s developed dementia. So I don’t have- I don’t have  _ time, _ ” he said, turning to her. “I don’t have any time left.  _ We _ don’t have any time left. I know you said whatever you came up with would need testing for a long time before we could even try it on  _ me _ , but there’s no time left, and I can’t just-” he paused, choked up, and Moira bit her lower lip, seeing herself in that exact position, feeling the exact sense of despair and pain and love, so deep and overwhelming she was ready to do whatever it took. “Moira, I can’t let him go like this.”

“What do you want from me?” She asked, slowly, knowing the answer already. 

“Whatever you thought up,” he said, bloodshot eyes boring holes into her mismatched ones, “Test it on me. Please.  _ Please _ , Moira. I’m begging you here.” 

The sun let out the last rays of light behind the horizon. The sky was purple blue golden pink and red, and the stars began to poke through its fabric. Moira had one thought in her head, sounding oddly like her mother -  _ this is the beginning of your end. _ She knew it was so. 

“Yes,” she said, “Okay. We’ll try.” 

Angela was wrong, she thought as Gabriel pulled her closer for an embrace and cried on her shoulder. She was Icarus, because her love would be her downfall. 

  
  
  


 

The examination room was cold and sterile. Reyes gripped the stretcher so tight, she could swear he dented the metal. 

“You’re sure?” She asks, injection in hand, fingers finding a vein in the inside of his arm. 

“More than I’ve ever been,” he said. They looked at each other in complicity, and she nodded, prickling the skin and pushing-

And Gabriel  _ screamed.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "snek what took you so long???" I WAS GRADUATING I APOLOGIZE
> 
> I'm not using tumblr anymore for obvious reasons so if you want message me on discord lazy_universes#6315

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if I fucked up English again!! ESL people unite
> 
> thanks to buttons for bearing with me and letting me use the idea of Moira having Marfan Syndrome, and also for schooling my lawyer ass on Marfan Syndrome lmao te amo viada
> 
> posting this before I update chiba city blues just so y'all won't think I hate Moira lmao 
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr if you'd like! http://lazy-universes.tumblr.com/


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